


Tremors and Tribulations

by Fernandidilly_yo



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Hurt Tony, Hurt/Comfort, I may have issues..., If you couldn't tell from all the Tony tags, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric, but light on the comfort..., sorry., this is a fic about Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-01-04 22:31:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fernandidilly_yo/pseuds/Fernandidilly_yo
Summary: Nine times that Tony Stark's hands shook, and one time they held steady.





	Tremors and Tribulations

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brought to you by, _ Tony-Angst. _  
Tony-Angst is its own brand of angst that you may find at your local comic book store or any other Marvel-related chain or location. 
> 
> _ Long term effects of Tony-Angst may include (but are not limited to) heartache, mental-breakdown, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and uncontrollable amounts of crying. _
> 
> If you experience any of these symptoms be sure to contact your therapist. 
> 
> ** Disclaimer- ** I am not affiliated with Marvel in any way.

**1.**

Tony’s hands fumble with the buttons of his school uniform, it’s hard to press them into place when his fingers won’t stop shaking.

“Here,” Jarvis says, leaning down in front of Tony. “Let me.” Jarvis gives Tony a kind smile as he buttons up his coat, smoothing down Tony’s wild hair a second later. He pats Tony on the shoulder as he straightens back up, “there you are young sir, you look very handsome.”

Tony tries to smile up at the man, but he feels sick, his stomach has been twisting up into knots for hours, and he had worried the whole car ride here that he might throw up.

Today is Tony’s introduction at his new school in Andover Massachusetts. He’ll meet the Headmaster and learn his schedule, and later Jarvis will take him to his new room and help Tony unpack, and then Jarvis will leave and go back home, and Tony will stay here.

Tony glances up at the large building and feels his lips quiver, he presses one of his trembling fists to his mouth to hide it, because dad says that crying isn’t for men, and Tony is seven years old now, he isn’t allowed to be a baby.

But it’s hard not to cry, thinking about being left alone here, without mom or Jarvis. They’re going to be so far away, over 223 miles, Tony looked it up, traced his fingers along the map over and over, counted the miles in his head on the four-hour trip here.

Jarvis gently tugs on Tony’s shoulder and Tony turns to the man, following along as Jarvis leads him off the curb and a few steps back toward the car. When they’re beside the passenger door Jarvis crouches down, getting his suit pants dirty on the asphalt.

Tony looks at Jarvis with watery eyes, wondering what they are doing.

“I hope you know, Master Tony,” Jarvis says, “that it is quite alright to feel frightened.”

Tony sniffs, he has nervous butterflies fluttering around in his stomach, he wonders if that feeling has to do with his nerve-endings firing off, or if it’s a chemical reaction, he’s still learning about the human body, it doesn’t make as much sense as robotics do. “It is?” he asks back, storing away his questions for later.

Jarvis nods, placing his hands on Tony’s shoulders. “Sometimes going on adventures can be scary, but that’s what makes it an adventure, the excitement of it.” He rubs at Tony’s arms, like mom used to do when she wanted to warm Tony up. It helps Tony feel a little better, less like he’s going to shake apart.

“I’ve been frightened on my adventures,” Jarvis explains, “but I would never give those adventures up. Do you understand?”

Tony nods, he still feels nauseous and scared, but maybe that’s okay. If Jarvis has felt frightened of his adventures, then maybe Tony is allowed to feel frightened too.

“Thank you, Mister Jarvis,” Tony says, voice soft.

Jarvis hugs him for a long time behind the car, and then, later, after Tony has unpacked all his things and Jarvis has to go back home, he hugs Tony for even longer- his fingers buried in Tony’s hair, Tony’s hands clutching to Jarvis’ jacket.

Tony doesn’t get in trouble for crying then, he thinks maybe that’s because Mister Jarvis cries too. 

* * *

**2.**

The December wind cuts at Tony’s cheekbones, leaves his nose red and his ears numb. Tony bites the inside of his lip and wills himself to be calm, tries his best to put on a façade he doesn’t feel, reminds himself to keep breathing.

The scotch in his system hasn’t helped, Tony longs for more.

Obadiah places a hand at Tony’s back and Tony isn’t sure if it’s there because his feet have faltered at the edge of the cemetery, or if it’s there as a source of comfort. It doesn’t matter either way. Tony takes a breath of icy air and forces himself forward.

He doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t return their greetings, doesn’t acknowledge their sympathetic words. Tony lets Obie field all conversation directed at him and just focuses on standing here, focuses on breathing, focuses on holding all the broken pieces of himself together.

Just a few more hours…Just a few more hours of one of the worst experiences of Tony’s life, and then he can leave. He can trudge his way back into his lonely apartment and drink until he can’t remember what he was drinking to forget in the first place.

Tony doesn’t want to be here, watching as his parents are lowered into the ground. Surrounded by strangers that are only here out of obligation. Having to put on a front for the cameras that he can’t see but he knows are there. Tony doesn’t want to be here.

But he came to say goodbye to mom.

The eulogy is composed mostly of Howard’s accomplishments. Of the technology he invented, the things he did in the war, of the people he helped, of the friends he has left behind.

Mom is lost among all of Howard’s successes, she is mentioned in passing, as Howard Stark’s Wife. Her name becomes an attachment of Howard’s, his achievements becoming her achievements by connection.

It makes Tony feel sick, makes his stomach twist and bile burn at the back of his throat, makes his eyes sting and his mouth turn dry.

Obadiah leans against him, one of his arms going across Tony’s shoulders. “Here my boy,” he says so only Tony can hear, discreetly pressing a pair of sunglasses into Tony’s numb hand. “Put’em on,” he whispers, flicking his eyes over to where paparazzi loiter at the edge of the graveyard. “Don’t let them see you when you’re already down.”

Tony’s hand clenches around the sunglasses as Obie leans away. He has to swallow against the grief trying to slice its way up his throat, has to fight against the urge to scream, to say _screw the world_\- because Tony is seventeen years old and he’s staring at the caskets of his parents, and if he isn’t allowed to show weakness now, then when the hell will he ever be?

Tony feels a prickling behind his eyes as the man continues on about Howard Stark and his greatness, he feels breathless as he stares at his mother’s coffin, he feels lightheaded as he stands here, the only Stark left in existence.

Tony takes a deep breath of frigid air and slips the sunglasses on with fumbling fingers, and then, when his hands won’t stop trembling, won’t stop giving him away, Tony stuffs them into his pockets. Pretending for the world that he isn’t falling apart, because that’s what he’s supposed to do.

* * *

**3.**

He can’t steady his hands.

They shake and tremble when Tony tries to use them, making pain shoot up into his chest, so sharp and piercing that Tony is left breathless at times. Panting around anger, and agony, and the foreign object shoved where his sternum used to be. 

“I had to sever muscles when I did the operation,” Yinsen tells him one day, when Tony can’t quite get a solid grip on his soldering-iron. “Ones that connect to the arms.”

Tony turns to the other man, doesn’t comment on the fact that it wasn’t so much an ‘operation’ as a procedure done in a butcher shop. None of this is Yinsen’s fault. And even if Tony hates the magnet lodged in his chest, hates the car-batterie snaking wires from inside him, hates that he can’t seem to get a full breath- he knows that what Yinsen did was to save his life.

Save Tony from his own invention, save him from his own legacy, save him from his own ignorance.

“Under normal circumstances, you’d be on bed rest, under heavy medication,” Yinsen goes on, his voice is calm, conversational. Because that’s how it always is, even with cameras watching their every move, with the makings of a bomb scattered around them, with guns pointed at their heads- Yinsen is always cool and collected.

Tony appreciates that, he relies on that.

“But these aren’t normal circumstances,” Tony says, not a question, a statement of fact.

“No,” Yinsen agrees.

Tony makes a fist, wills his fingers to be still. He tightens his grip on the soldering-iron, looks away from Yinsen as he says, “so let’s get back to work.”

* * *

**4.**

He wakes up to his own wheezing gasps.

Tony chokes on his next inhale and tries to lever himself out of bed, but his arms are weak and trembling, buckling against the mattress as Tony struggles to untangle himself from sweat-soaked sheets.

“Sir?” JARVIS inquires, “are you in need of assistance?”

Tony collapses out of bed, the world blurring and twisting around him. His stomach and heart doing their utmost to simultaneously escape out his mouth, leaving Tony to choke and splutter against the both of them.

It’s ironic that Tony can experience the worst case of airsickness he’s ever had right here on the bedroom floor, fingers scrabbling at the carpet and legs kicking out of bedding.

Tony’s fallen hundreds of feet from the air, but it’s right now, sprawled in a mess of blankets, that Tony feels like he’s truly plummeting.

“Jar’s,” Tony gasps, “get—the…_arc.”_

“I’m afraid you’ve left the replacement palladium cores in the workshop, sir. If you’d allow me to call Ms. Potts or Colonel Rhodes I---”

Tony grabs a fistful of sheets with trembling fingers and pulls himself up. _“No,”_ he rasps. He hasn’t told Rhodey or Pepper about the palladium poisoning, and he can’t let them find out, not this way, with Tony gasping and wheezing, falling apart on the bedroom floor.

Tony gets himself to his knees and the world tilts dangerously to the side, or maybe that’s him, maybe he’s the one that’s falling over. It’s a hard toss-up, trying to determine which one is failing him more right now, his perceptions or his body. He isn’t sure, his vision grays out for a few sparks of a moment, and when Tony comes back to himself, he’s somehow managed to get his feet under him.

Workshop, Tony can get himself to the workshop.

Tony isn’t exactly sure how he achieves it, -on quivering legs and with double vision, heart pounding painfully against the casing of the arc reactor, teeth chattering so hard Tony’s afraid he might bite a hole through tongue- somehow, he makes it down to the workshop.

DUM-E comes racing forward the moment Tony shoves open the door, knocking into a toolset and shattering something else, Howard’s old cigar box in his clawed-hand. Tony takes it distractedly, blinking hard and trying to breathe past the pain welling up in his chest.

He’s on the floor, Tony realizes absently, he doesn’t remember how he got there, but it doesn’t matter.

He props the box on his knees and tugs his shirt halfway up, pulling out the reactor with a cut-off yell, a strangled wheeze, an unsaid curse, somehow a mixture of all three. Tony replaces the burnt-out core with a new one, fingers trembling and numb as he slides the arc reactor back into his chest.

Back where it belongs, keeping him alive, killing him too.

Tony half-collapses against the concrete-wall, the chill of it seeping what little warmth he had away from him, leaving him cold and shaky, alone in the quiet of the workshop, save for his wheezed breathing.

Tony thinks JARVIS might be trying to talk to him, trying to get his attention, but Tony’s spent. He’s used up what little reserves he had, and that wasn’t very much to begin with.

Feeling feverish and shivery, Tony closes his eyes. 

* * *

**5.**

He used to dream of foreign constellations, of an endless void, of shimmering stars, of an unlimited amount of possibilities.

It’s different now, evolved into something more frightening, but it’s the same in most ways; the looming threat of the unknown, of the impossible, of the unexplainable.

That’s still there, and it’s still terrifying.

But now there are the faces of the people he’s failed, the loved ones he didn’t protect, the teammates he couldn’t avenge, the innocents he had a hand in killing.

Because it’s not enough, -no matter how far Tony’s willing to go, how hard he hits back, how high he reaches- it will never be enough.

Tony comes awake with a spasm of movement, there’s a moment of utter disorientation, of absolute panic, when he doesn’t immediately recognize his surroundings.

Tony blinks against the pounding of his heart and forces himself to process.

Small room, he’s in a twin-sized bed, a bunk above him. Toys piled up in the corner, a lava lamp glowing from its place perched on a dresser, moonlight bleeding through the cracks of the blinds. It smells of floral laundry detergent and Elmer’s glue.

Tony sighs to himself, he’s still at Clint’s place, sleeping in one of the kid’s bedrooms. He’s fine, they’re safe, or at least moderately. How safe can they truly be with Ultron still out there? He must be plotting, building and planning even now, as Tony lay here- bunking it at Hostel Barton with the rest of the team and the tiny mystery munchkins. 

“You alright?” Bruce whispers from above. Tony flinches at the unexpected voice, catching himself before he whacks his skull against the headboard.

“Fine,” Tony says on instinct, and then, after a moment of awkward silence, “sorry I woke you.”

Bruce hums at him, shifting in the bed over Tony, not bothering to give a verbal answer.

The house is quiet around them, save for the sound of the creaking wood and the settling of the house’s frame. Tony can’t remember the last time he was in a home-like this, old but loved, filled with children’s drawings and smelling of homemade food.

Back when Rhodey’s mom was still alive probably, back when Tony had been young and horribly stupid, back when life had been so much simpler and far more meaningless.

“If you had asked me yesterday what the chances of me sharing a bunk-bed with Tony Stark were, I would have said less than 13%,” Bruce breaks the silence after a handful of minutes.

Tony smiles, and it’s brittle and shakes at the edges, but there’s no one to see it here in the dark of a child’s bedroom, so he lets the expression dance on his lips instead of wiping it off like he normally would. “Yee of little faith,” Tony says. “I should’ve just forgone the personal bedrooms back at the Tower, had us all bunk together like we were staying at Superhero Camp.”

“Sounds horrifying,” Bruce says, deadpan, because he’s overly fond of dry humor.

“But think of the hijinks, the crazy shenanigans we’d get up to,” Tony says, and he’s joking, but something in that statement sobers him up. Makes his hand quiver as he clutches at his borrowed blanket, a cartoon figure he doesn’t recognize scrunching between his fingers.

Bruce must feel the change in atmosphere, because he pauses for a drawn-out moment before he asks, “Tony?”

“I…” Tony starts, and it’s getting hard to breathe, like there’s a weight on his chest, like the arc reactor is back between his lungs. “I’m going to fix this, Bruce,” he says, and he’s not quite sure which one of them he’s trying to reassure more, Bruce or himself.

It’s hitting harder here, in a suburban house with a porch-swing and rickety-stairs, an old barn out back and a pile of wood waiting to be chopped in the front. It’s put things into perspective, given this whole situation a horrible kind of clarity.

“I just…I just, I need to figure out his next move,” Tony says, and the words come out half-whispered.

But how do you go about forming a plan against a foe who knows almost everything about you? How do you counter against someone who has already planned for your strike before you’ve even taken it?

And if Tony can’t do this, if he can’t figure out a way to take down something he helped _create,_ then how in the hell is he ever going to be able to deal with the things that lay in wait out there? How is he supposed to hold his own against the unknown when he can’t keep his footing under something as trivial as Ultron?

Bruce sighs from above him, sounding tired and worn. “This isn’t solely on you, Tony,” he says, “it’s not all on you.”

Tony presses a shaky fist to his temple and closes his eyes, repeating the words in his head, trying to make himself believe them, but knowing deep down in his heart that they’re not true.

* * *

**6.**

The Bunker seems to echo around him.

Silence shouldn’t echo, it shouldn’t be so oppressive either. But the weight of it bears down on Tony, makes it hard to move, makes it almost impossible to breathe.

Tony stares at the metal of Steve’s shield, the symbol that his father helped to create, the glimmer of red, white, and blue that used to bring him hope, that used to bring the promise of a friend.

Tony rips his gaze away.

His suit is cracked open, split down the middle, a crater made of damaged metal and fractured armor resting right above Tony’s heart. That seems right in a way, it’s almost poetic, that the heart of Tony’s suit should lay shattered and broken, a mirror image of the way his own heart feels inside of his chest.

FRIDAY would have sent out another suit the moment she was cut off from Tony. But it will take time, especially now, when they have to fly under General Ross’ radar. 

In the meantime, the cold seeps in, leaking through the cracks in Tony’s armor and stealing the heat of his anger away, leaving him with nothing but the chill of heartbreak.

Tony takes in a breath of frigid air and holds it until his lungs burn, until his chest feels too tight, until his head spins with it. He takes in one icy breath after another and holds it for as long as he can.

Because this is something he can control, this is something he can do, here, where he has fallen so far and been torn open once again, where he has lost all sense of control, Tony can at least do this.

He sits alone, shivering in the cold of a Siberian Bunker, with the remains of a shattered friendship scattered in front of him, the taste of blood and betrayal still fresh on his lips.

Tony sits, and shivers, and breathes.

* * *

**7.**

He can’t sleep.

Every time Tony closes his eyes, he sees _that_ road, a night that he should have never been allowed to see in the first place, an event that no one should ever have to see. 

His parents’ murder.

It’s a bloody picture painted behind Tony’s eyelid. The thought of it makes his breath stutter and his chest clench down at random moments when he doesn’t keep himself adequately distracted. The sight of it is too much, it feels like a colossal weight has been thrown at Tony, and he doesn’t know how to keep upright under the pressure of it.

He can’t sleep, so Tony works instead.

Rhodey will be out of the hospital in two days, and Tony needs to have the braces done by the time Rhodey gets back. He needs to fix this, he needs to make this right, but Tony can’t, he can’t change the past, and he can’t give Rhodey back his legs, so he’ll do the next best thing.

The braces are near perfect, light enough that they won’t cause any strain or pull, flexible in all the right places, supportive in the rest. Tony’s calibrated and adjusted the braces as much as he can without feedback from Rhodey, now he needs to make them comfortable.

Tony has only just started adding the cushioning when there is a light beep from behind him, a signal that someone has entered the workshop. Tony only has a moment to register his confusion, the thought of- no one is _left_ that has the access codes to his lab, everyone is _gone_\- before he turns to find Pepper standing there.

Tony straightens up from his hunched position in surprise, his vision going blurred and hazy for a moment, graying around the edges. There is a dull pounding behind his eyes, an all-over ache that comes from pulling one too many all-nighters.

Tony grips at his workbench with quivering fingers, trying to steady himself even though he couldn’t possibly be more unstable. The sight of Pepper has undone him even more, left him breathless and off-balance where he had thought he was already those things.

“Hello, Tony,” she greets, from half a room, a whole world away.

Tony takes a breath, tries to find the right words, but he’d just managed to suture the bleeding wound of his heart and seeing her is tearing the stitches wide open. “Pep,” is all Tony can seem to get out, the rest of the sentence lost somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.

Pepper gives him one of her sad looks, her eyes glittering with concern, her lips pulling down with worry. Tony turns away from it, something hot and needy twisting around his ribs at receiving such an expression. Tony presses his palms against the cold workbench in front of him, trying and failing to conceal their shaking.

A moment of stillness passes between them, Tony’s back to Pepper, her stare resting against his neck. And then Pepper’s heels are clicking across the concert floor. The noise has no right to be so soothing, but it is, and this is why Tony can’t be around Pepper if they’re not together, because everything about her seems to pull and tug at every part of him.

Tony closes his eyes as Pepper comes up behind him, almost pressed against his back, her hair tickling the skin of his bare arm. When he pulls in a breath it’s filled with the scent vanilla shampoo and her cherry-blossom perfume.

“Tony,” she says, just that, just his name. But it unravels something in his chest, makes it easier to breathe somehow. 

Tony turns to Pepper, feeling worn and so very tired.

Pepper sighs when Tony finally faces her, her blue eyes scanning over him, taking in every crack, every fracture, every dent in Tony’s armor. She trails her fingers up from the crease of his elbow all the way to his cheek, her palm soft and warm against his skin, the feeling of it so familiar it’s almost painful.

Tony can’t help but lean into her touch, his eyes closing against the wave of dizziness that washes over him, he’s not even sure if that’s from his exhaustion or from being in such close proximity to Pepper after weeks of hardly talking to her.

A second, a day, a year, an eternity later, Pepper leans into him, her other hand grasping at his own and intertwining their fingers. She squeezes his palm to get Tony’s attention and when their eyes catch Pepper tilts her head forward to rest her forehead against his own. 

Calm and gentle and everything Tony needs.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispers in the nonexistent space between them, a soft puff of air against Tony’s own lips.

“Okay,” he whispers back, so incredibly glad, so pathetically grateful to have her back. “Okay.”

* * *

**8.**

It’s still all over his hands.

It’s later, -after they’ve dug the ship out from under chunks of what was once a moon, after they’ve spent hours upon hours repairing what they could, after they’ve taken off- that Tony realizes, it’s still on his hands.

The ashes.

The dust.

The remnants.

What was once Peter.

It’s all over Tony’s hands, under his fingernails, sticky with Tony’s blood, knotted in his hair, it’s the remains of the boy he lost, the kid he failed. It’s all over Tony, it’s under his tongue and filling up his lungs, and Tony can’t _breathe._

Tony can’t breathe with it clinging to his skin, but he can’t wash it off, can’t waste the resources, can’t use the water it would take to rid himself of the ashes of a boy that no longer exists.

So he scrubs at his hands and arms until they’re raw, failing to catch his breath as he sits alone and bleeding, trying to clean away another person from his skin.

Tony chokes and splutters and blinks dirt and tears from his eyes, and he thinks about how he’s wasting time, wasting energy, how he could be resting or working on repairs, but instead he is here, on the floor of a spaceship having some sort of mental breakdown instead of doing what needs to be done.

Something sharp and cutting bubbles up Tony’s throat and he thinks maybe he’s going to sob, or scream, or maybe even be sick, but instead what comes up is a laugh.

A shrill unhinged kind of sound, one that Tony never thought himself capable of creating. It’s pouring out of him, making the stab wound in his abdomen spark with agony, but he can’t stop, he can’t make himself stop.

Tony laughs, and then his laughter turns into something else, something ugly and harsh and primal, and Tony’s back to not being able to breathe, suffocating under the weight of his own sorrow, strangled by the unsurmountable horror he feels.

Tony presses his trembling ash-covered hands to his mouth and tries to muffle the noise, laying his forehead against the cold floor as he laughs and sobs and bleeds, he sits hunched over as he’s consumed with the all-encompassing feeling of pure and utter _loss._

Tony hears the alien woman come in, feels the vibration of her footsteps, but he doesn’t say anything, just continues to pathetically gasp against the ground.

Tony is shaking apart, he’s breaking in a way he isn’t sure he’s capable of fixing or not, and at this moment he isn’t even sure if he’s _worth_ fix. Not when he’s failed this badly, when he’s let the universe crumble around him, when he couldn’t protect them even after giving it his all.

When the woman speaks it doesn’t come as a surprise, but what she says does. “The boy. He was yours?”

Tony tries to gather himself, tries to find his bearings, but when he response it’s still ragged and half-sobbed sounding. “He-he isn’t- _wasn’t_…” It’s past tense now, because Peter is gone. He’s dead and Tony doesn’t even have a body to bring home to May, to the person who actually has a right to mourn Peter.

“I’m not…I’m not his...” Tony doesn’t know what he was and what he wasn’t to Peter. He tried to be there for the kid, to help Peter out when he got in over his head, to be there even when things were okay. Tony wasn’t really anything to Peter, but the kid was something to him. “Yes…yes he was mine.”

The alien woman doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask any more questions, doesn’t do anything really. She just sits with Tony, the two of them alone together, drifting desolate in uncharted space, waiting for the uncertain to come, maybe even hoping it doesn’t take them too. 

* * *

**9.**

Tony feels like he’s in a trance, like the world has stopped around him.

The nurse gives him a bundle of wiggling blankets and Morgan only weighs seven pounds, but Tony can’t help but feel that he’s holding the weight of the whole world in his hands.

She’s this tiny little thing, squishy and soft, with big brown eyes and a full head of hair, and Tony has never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

She’s staring straight at him, innocent eyes and round cheeks, she’s looking at Tony with her whole entire self and Tony has grown up in the spotlight, but no one’s stare has ever felt this important.

The hospital room is loud and still moving around them, but this seems like the first moment of calm that Tony has had since Pepper went into labor fourteen hours ago, the first moment that Tony’s been able to breathe since this all started.

“She’s beautiful,” Tony whispers to Pepper, not daring to take his eyes off of their daughter.

“She’s all you,” Pepper whispers back, tired and worn out, covered in sweat and hospital sheets- and Tony has never been more in love with her.

It’s hard to choose who to look at, Pep, who is as bright as the sun and just as fierce and determined. Or the little girl in his arms, somehow a combination of them both, Pepper’s brightness and Tony’s curiosity.

There are minor tremors in Tony’s fingers, it’s coming from the core of him, where there are earthquakes and aftershocks slamming into Tony, leaving him with a watery smile and a shaky frame, completely undone by the little masterpiece cradled to his chest.

Tony glances over at Pepper, feeling weak and so very happy. “You did it,” he says.

Pepper’s hand slides out from under the blankets, her fingers, unlike Tony’s are rock solid. She lays her hand on top of his, their fingers resting on little Morgan.

“We did it,” she says back.

* * *

**+1.**

It’s happening again.

The world is on fire, and everything they know, everything they love, is about to be burnt up into flame, smothered out into ash. 

Thanos has the stones again.

He’s here and alive, a walking living monster ready to wipe out the universe. He’s prepared to end it all, to take everything away. A snap of his fingers and all life, everything they’ve worked for, suffered for, died for, everything they’ve vowed to protect, will be snuffed out.

It’s happening again.

It’s the most horrifying thing Tony has ever experienced, his biggest nightmare come back to life and made all the worse for it. It’s bloodcurdling and breath-snatching, terrifying in every sense of the word. 

Tony’s knees feel weak, his skin is crawling, he can hardly breathe.

It’s happening again.

.

.

.

But this time.

This time, Tony knows what he has to do.

Tony lunges for the Titan, heart-pounding and ears ringing- he grabs onto the gauntlet and clings to it, to the stones, with all his might. Holding on as Thanos beats into him with enough strength to dent the armor, to shatter bone.

It’s only a cluster of seconds, but it’s all Tony needs. 

Tony lands in the wreckage of what was once their home with his head spinning and his mind racing. Mouth full of dirt, blood and grime, but no ash, no skin and bone- because this isn’t last time, Tony won’t let it be like last time.

Thanos stands above him, hand raised, ready to steal it all away, to wipe them from existence, to take their lives as if they were never there to begin with. Delusional in the most dangerous kind of way, a man who believes what he is doing is right, a man that will stop for nothing that gets in his way.

“I am, inevitable.”

.

.

.

But what Thanos doesn’t understand, is that Tony is a dangerous man too.

It’s extraordinary, to find out what you are capable of, what you’re prepared to do, how far you are willing to go when you know in your heart that what you are doing is right. 

Tony takes in a breath, one of his last, and wills the stones into place. It’s more power than a human can withstand, more power than Tony ever thought himself capable of controlling, more power than he’s ever deserved.

It’s burning him up, pulling apart atoms and disassembling his DNA, it’s ripping Tony into pieces, eating him alive, filling him up until he shatters, unable to contain the raw magnitude of it all. 

It’s shrapnel piercing his chest, it’s a car crash on a December day, it’s holding a boy as he turns to dust, it’s a shield slamming down on his heart, it’s watching Pepper as she’s swallowed up by flames, it’s being left paralyzed and helpless, looking on as the arc, his life, is torn away.

It’s all of that, all of that pain, all of that suffering, magnified and twisted up together, a kaleidoscope of shock and grief in his brain, an overwhelming ache and sorrow in his chest.

But then, Tony closes his eyes and breathes in against the smell of his own burning flesh and his singeing veins. He pushes it all away, buries it down.

Because past all of that, behind all the pain and agony, this is the first moment in a lifetime of moments, that Tony has felt truly and utterly right.

Tony opens his eyes and lets the power feed into him, he lets it ravish his body and fill his bones, he lets is replace his blood and consume his marrow. Because this is what it’s all been about, this is what all those things have been leading up to. 

Tony hasn’t always known who he is or who he should be, but right here, right now, this is it, this is what he was made to do, this is who he was always destined to be.

“And I…”

Tony has been struggling for so long, and it’s never been enough, no matter how hard Tony hit back or how far he was willing to go, it was never ever enough.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it?

It all led to this, this one pivotal moment where everything is on the line and there’s only one way things could possibly go.

Maybe no one can truly be enough, maybe it’s not even about being enough in the first place, maybe…maybe it’s just about doing enough at the right moment.

“…am…”

Tony has been fighting for a long time, fighting against bad guys and the monsters in the closet, the demons he laid bare and the past mistakes that he can never fully atone for, fighting against himself.

Tony has always been fighting against something it seems.

And this is it, the final battle, the last blow.

Tony doesn’t have to fight anymore.

“…Iron Man.”

Tony’s fingers don’t shake, they don’t waver as he holds up his hand, his last act of defiance, his most important moment, his closing statement. Tony’s hands are as steady as can be, because how could they not be?

What is there to be scared of now, when Tony finally knows what he has to do? Everything will turn out just as it was meant to be, he doesn’t have to worry anymore.

He’s done all he could.

The world’s safety is out of Tony’s hands now.

But maybe…maybe that’s okay.

.

.

.

Tony takes a breath and snaps. 

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts collecting dust for _ months, _ I'm so glad to finally have it finished and posted. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, please tell me what you thought. ;)
> 
> <3000


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